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crew chief, part of the team that had kept him running. "Code Delta Echo One-one."
"Advance, Major Graham."
Jaime stepped past that blood-traced perimeter, conscious that the AP railguns continued to track him as he walked. Carefully, unwilling to make any sudden or surprising moves, he made his way to the Bolo's prow, close enough that the glacis sloped up and away from him like an eighty-foot cliff.
"I've come to talk," Jaime told the Bolo.
There was no reply, though he had the impression that the machine was studying him closely. That fact by itself was interesting. A Mark XXXIII possessed a fully autonomous psychotronic AI and hyper-heuristic programming; ever since the introduction of the Mark XXIV, Bolos had begun developing personalities of their own that, at times, could seem struangly, eerily human.
This was the third time that Jaime had made this trip up the hill, and each time he'd come away with the distinct impression that Hector was shackled somehow, limited in his thoughts, hampered in the way he expressed himself. It was a little like talking to a child, and a stubborn and not-too-bright child at that. The Masters were responsible, clearly. But what had they done to the Bolo's artificial intelligence, and how?
Maybe he should allow Alita to come up here and see what she could learn. She'd volunteered after his first visit, but he'd put her off, and eventually he'd had to order her to stay clear. If he was caught up here, he knew of a way to trigger a burst from a flechette gun, and he would be just another suicide. If Alita were caught with Hector, though, the results could be catastrophic. It was possible that the enemy knew that she had once worked with Bolos. If the machines made the logical conclusion, that a Bolo tech
34
William H. Keith, Jr.
was trying to reprogram their pet Bolo, they might well kill every human left alive on the planet.
He was beginning to wonder, though, if getting her up here to talk to Hector wouldn't be worth even that risk. He was getting nowhere, and he was running out of ideas.
"Do you remember me coming up here before?" he asked at last.
"Yes." Just that one word, without elaboration. Mark XXXIIIs could be downright chatty at times, and they could certainly cany their end of a conversation with animation enough that humans communicating with them by audio only might never guess they were speaking with an artificial intelligence. This one had
*Ё w O
once had the reputation of being almost philosophical at times, with a love of metaphor that could be almost poetic.
Now, though, Hector was no more communicative than a Mark XIX the last mark before the breakthrough in psychotronics that had led to self-aware, self-volitional Bolos. Jaime had never worked directly with Bolos in his military career, but he'd learned a thing or two about them. Bolos, after all, were the last word in ground combat.
At least, they had been until humanity had encountered the !Ё!Ё!.
"Do you remember the battle with the clackers . . . with the Masters?"
There was an uncomfortable pause, and Jaime had the distinct feeling that the machine was working at something, thinking it over ... or possibly struggling to remember. There was no outward sign of struggle, but that pause ...
"Negative," it said at last.
"Do you remember any battles?" Hector's battle logs were impressive. Since he'd rolled off the Bolo Plant assembly lines at Durandel almost three centuries ago,
BOLD RISING
35
Bolo Hecate of the Line Number 28373 had participated in twenty-nine major battles and some hundreds of skirmishes, police actions, and deployments. "Do you remember the Stand at Grauve?"
